It would be difficult to argue with the economic logic of the companies that produce the movies and other cultural artifacts that we so enthusiastically choose.  Hollywood not only sells large numbers of movie tickets these days, it also generates small mountains of additional cash in merchandising rights for movie-themed T shirts and mugs and children’s lunchboxes and pajamas and so forth.

Thus, when it comes to packaging arts and entertainment as consumer experiences, Hollywood, like the other merchants of mass culture, shows itself to be quite well attuned with the feelings we crave to pseudo-experience, or to project out into the world.

But what about producing works that future generations will care to keep?  Can a form that never challenges us really be expected to yield any memorable results?

And how can other cultural forms (among these, pop music) which focus less on things like vocal talent and underlying musical quality than on our simple ability to identify with the people producing them, aspire, in the end, to be significantly different from our children’s "refrigerator art?"

This does not bode well for our chances of impressing future archaeologists (or a hypothetical alien in a space ship) with the kinds of cultural artifacts we are producing and consuming today. 

But perhaps more significant is the effects that these artifacts are having on us right now.  Having been reduced to nothing more than consumer goods, they have become part of a general consumer culture that is in no way ennobling—and is, in many ways, demeaning.